John Madden Quotations

When your arm gets hit, the ball is not going to go where you want it to.

That's the biggest gap in sports, the difference between the winner and the loser of the Super Bowl.

If you win a Super Bowl before you're fired, you're a genius, and everyone listens to you. But a coach is just a guy whose best class in grammar school was recess and whose best class in high school was P.E. I never thought I was anything but a guy whose best class was P.E.

You're not going to eliminate concussions. Anytime you hit your head, you have a chance of getting a concussion, in any sport, too. I think we have to learn more about it. Part of it is rules, part of it is equipment, part of it is medical studies, knowing more about the brain.

Don't worry about the horse being blind, just load the wagon.

I'm the luckiest guy in the world. I never really had a job. I was a football player, then a football coach, then a football broadcaster. It's been my life. Pro football has been my life since 1967. I've enjoyed every part of it. Never once did it ever feel like work.

Discipline is knowing what you're supposed to do and doing it as best you can... On third down and short yardage, the Raiders don't jump offside. That's discipline - not a coat and tie, not a clean shave.

Self-praise is for losers. Be a winner. Stand for something. Always have class, and be humble.

I've always said winning's the great deodorant, and conversely, when you have a bad record - everything stinks - and everything starts to unravel, and everything falls apart.

The only yardstick for success our society has is being a champion. No one remembers anything else.

Guess what the Redskins have? You know, I take the bus to the games, we park in the parking lot where the visiting team parks. So I go out there after the game and they have a food truck there! And the guy comes over and he cooks food for the Redskins, and they come out to the parking lot before they get on the bus and they go to the food truck!

When the going gets tough, I'm not always sure what you do. I'm not saying that I know how to fix everything when the going gets tough, but I do know this: when the going goes tough, you don't quit. And you don't fold up. And you don't go in the other direction.

If you look at tailgating, everyone does it. It's for everyone who likes to cook outdoors. It could be a 4th of July picnic.

Some day we're gonna have interactive television where you can pick the shot that you want. You can watch defense, or you can watch the end-zone shot, or you can watch an isolated shot of Terance Mathis or whoever you want to. Because right now, the only thing that you watch is what the producer or director decides to show you.

I've never eaten just a few bites of things I liked in my life.

Trip Hawkins - and this was the early 1980s - was saying there's going to be a day when everyone has a computer and they're going to want to do more on it, including playing games. So he started up a company, EA Sports, and he was going to have three games, football, basketball and baseball. So I was the football game.

The fewer rules a coach has, the fewer rules there are for players to break.

I'd like to work with kids in special education - younger kids.

When I got out of coaching, I had taught a class at the University of California, an extension class on football for fans. I was looking for tools. I was showing them films. I was going to write a textbook. Trip Hawkins came to me about making it a game for computers.

They're on the right road, but there's a long way to go on concussions, not only in the NFL, but college football, high school football and all football.

If a guy doesn't work hard and doesn't play well, he can't lead anything. All he is, is a talker.

If you see a defense team with dirt and mud on their backs they've had a bad day.

The road to Easy Street goes through the sewer.

Sometimes we think videogames are just games for kids, and then once they get out of grammar school or high school, they never play again, but that's when they really start playing.

If you think about it, I've never held a job in my life. I went from being an NFL player to a coach to a broadcaster. I haven't worked a day in my life.

Any defensive coordinator is worried about two things: a running quarterback and a deep ball. You know, don't get beat deep and don't let the quarterback run, because a big part of your defense can't account for the quarterback as a runner, so he gets a free run.

To me, discipline in football occurs on the field, not off it.

I get a certain feeling when I go to Lambeau field in Green Bay. Soldier field in Chicago is special to me. Those are the places that I really like. The stadiums.

In Oakland, Al Davis was a genius. We had Ron Wolff there, too, and he was a genius. There was no room for me to be a genius.

Knowing his coach likes him is more important to a player than anything else. To me, it was important to be able to chew out a player for screwing up and for him to accept it because he knew I liked him anyway.

I'm sure that had I not been a coach, I would have been some form of a teacher.

In all the years that I've been in football - I went directly from coaching to broadcasting - I never really had a lot of experience watching it.

Al Davis has been the biggest influence in my professional football life. I mean, he was a guy that gave me an opportunity, one, to get into professional football in 1967 as an assistant coach, and then at the age of 32, giving me the opportunity to be the head coach.

We need to let the referee's sole thing be to protect the quarterback and get those late hits out of there. They even have a stat on television that says 'knockdowns.' Knockdowns means that you knock him down after he throws the ball. The assumption is, if it's legal, we'll make excuses for them.

Having been in football all my life as a player and a coach and having been on the sideline, I think the closer we can get to bringing people what it's like standing and watching the game on the sideline, with a better view, would be the perfect situation for television football.

I don't know that the referee can be watching holding on the offensive line and get back to the quarterback. I think watching the quarterback is a full-time job.

I have this set-up at my house where I have one big movie theater screen that's 9 ft. by 16 ft. Then, I have nine 63-inch monitors around it; four on either side and one underneath. So I get all nine one o'clock games, and I can switch them onto the big screen. That's what I do on the Sundays during the season.

I tried golf for a while, but I wasn't very good at it, so I didn't play a lot of golf. I enjoy all sports, not just football. I like basketball, baseball, and I got into the World Cup. So really, sports in general are my life, and football specifically.

I've got five grandkids. They play baseball, they play football, they play basketball. I go to all the games. You always have that urge to say something when you're watching them. But I've learned to keep it to myself. I've blurted out some things and embarrassed myself.

People say, 'Is broadcasting the same as coaching?' I say, 'Hell, no.' Coaching, you win and lose. Broadcasting, you don't win and lose. Coaching was a lot bigger than broadcasting.

We need the quarterbacks. It's a passing league and a quarterback-driven league. We need the Peyton Mannings in football uniforms out there playing - the Tom Bradys, the Drew Breeses, the Philip Riverses - we need those guys instead of them standing on the sideline.

Coaches have to watch for what they don't want to see and listen to what they don't want to hear.

If someone remembers me as a coach, they still call me 'Coach,' but if they know me for the video game, they just call me 'Madden.'

Both of my sons used to coach high school football. When they started, I'd say things I shouldn't have. So I learned my lesson.

Nothing jazzes me up like football. I've acquired more passion of the years, not less. Not to love it wouldn't make sense.

Every time I go to the theater, there's something about the atmosphere, seeing something unfold live in front of an audience, that you can't get out of your system.

If you go back to the history of the 'Madden' game, I was probably on the cover of it half the time. So if I was to believe there was a curse, I would also have to believe I'd been cursed. And I've never had that feeling.

If you play the video game, you become more interested and you want to know more about it. You want to read as much about it as you can, see it live and watch as many games as you can. If you're the type who wants to be as involved as you can in the sport, you're probably going to want to play 'Madden NFL.'

It's been the video game ever since I got out of coaching. Even when I was an announcer, fewer and fewer people remembered me as 'Coach,' and as the years went on, people just started knowing me from the game.

Sports has always been a pass-through. You pay for something, and then you pass it through to television, you pass it through to advertisers, or you pass it through to season-ticket holders, luxury boxes and then the fans. Then it all adds up, and you take in more than you pass out.

If this is the final, we'll have a final final and a final final final.

I didn't get a phone call. If you don't get a phone call, you know what that means.

Baseball has better opening days and All-Star Games than the N.F.L. does. Ours stink.

He's just throwing that ball up on the deep ones. Every time he has thrown deep, it's into coverage.

His team is not putting up much of a fight.

He could do it as a player and he could do it as a coach, because they respect him. That's what it's all about.

I think the biggest difference is Marty has been a little bit sharper the last couple of games. At key moments he's held us in the game and given us a chance to win and we're going to need that if we're going to go far in the playoffs.

I was asked to do a (film) production of the play in London, it popped into my head suddenly that it would be a great part for Gwyneth to play. It's a great role, ... Obviously for me Gwyneth's performance is a definitive one and an extraordinary one.

I think they caught us at the end of a long trip. We didn't really have our legs in the third period, but we stuck with it and overcame a little bit of adversity. At the beginning of the (season) I think we would have collapsed a little bit.

When you're talking about the Super Bowl, this is the biggest thing we'll ever do. You have to have all your focus on that.

When Art walks in here, he knows what it is. He doesn't have to learn the nuances. He'll learn the coaches, the players and the football. The two of them, that's why this is going to work.

A lot of guys took it personally, myself included. I wasn't playing my best hockey at the time and we have a chance to redeem ourselves and pay Larry back in a way.

It's a big deal, ... ABC and MNF are a big part of NFL history, and it's going to end with the Super Bowl (on ABC). You can't say you're not looking forward to it.

It wasn't what I anticipated when he started talking.

It was crucial. It's something you have to do during the regular season to maintain your confidence. If you haven't beaten a team and you have to play them in the playoffs, it weighs on your mind.

It's a whole new way for us to think about building complex mechanical devices.

They can take football away from ABC on Monday nights, but they can't take away the memories.

They look like there's no life in them, no passion. I don't know how hard these wide receivers are playing for him.

I'm not going to make a lot of sense and I don't care. It comes from my heart. I am humbled and grateful and thankful. I just got to sit down. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

I just worry about overexposure. No matter how much you wanted to watch the NFL, there were no more games between Monday night and the next Sunday. I don't want us to become like college basketball or college football where you have games on every night. That's the direction it's going in. I really don't know that it's a great direction.

I know some guys will rise up to this and some guys are a little nervous about the GM sitting one step behind them and watching up close and personal.

I kind of figured that before. It's not a surprise. Why wouldn't you? We've got a great record going and we're playing well and we're responding to him.

I remember arriving in Miami and watching television that night. They showed the Packers arriving and Vince Lombardi and Bart Starr getting off the plane. Then the guy says, 'The Oklahoma Raiders' plane has also arrived.' The host city wasn't even sure where the other team was from.

I know as a coach, it's all about players. I had great players. They played hard, and they played well. As a coach, if you begin to think any other way, you're off base.

I think all of the events today can be filed under unbelievable, I guess.

I didn't see holding. There may have been holding, but it wasn't in that picture.

When its raining the field gets wet, then all of a sudden everyones running slower

There's a lot of letters in Ladanian Tomlinson

The best way to gain more yards is advance the ball down the field from the line of scrimmage.

Real frontier-busting math explores new worlds . . . . If you can communicate that experience, somewhere between math and uncertainty, life experience provides the balance.

Whenever you talk about a Mike Shanahan offense, you're always going to be talking about his offense.

The greatest gap in sports is between the winner and the loser of the Super Bowl. The winner has confetti, parades, rings, the whole thing. The loser puts his head down and goes to his house.

You can't win a game if you don't score any points.

Discipline in football occurs on the field, not off it. Discipline is knowing what you're supposed to do and doing it as best you can.

Winning is a great deodorant.

As I look back now on my coaching career, I think of my family, I think of the days that we spent together. I say this to coaches everywhere: If you ever have a chance to take your kids with you, take them. Don't miss that opportunity. Because when it's all over and done with, when you look back, those are going to be your fondest memories.

Mark Brunell usually likes to soak his balls before a rainy game.

Usually, the team that turns the ball over less will hold on to the ball more

Some yards is better than none yards?

Playing in this nice weather really makes me remember all the times I got stung by a bee.

I think comparisons are odious.

They'll score if they can just get into the endzone.

Here's a guy who when he runs, he moves faster.

He would have scored a touchdown if he hadn't been tackled right there.

When you have great players, playing great, well that's great football!

Boom, boom, foom, poom! He just ran right at 'em!

The best feeling is watching a real football game, because the games they show in the movies aren't real.

If the quarterback throws the ball in the endzone and the wide receiver catches it, it's a touchdown.

He got up looking out of his earhole!

The defense should be expecting a run or a pass here.